Kuwait to start ap­ply­ing VAT in six months

Al-Aiban and Os­saimi part­ner and tax ad­vi­sory ser­vice agent at Ernst and Young (EY) Alok Chugh said Kuwait will start prepar­ing to im­pose value added tax (VAT) within six months at most, and EY is cur­rently in talks with the fi­nance min­istry to pro­vide con­sul­tancy ser­vices for the pro­ject.

Speak­ing on the side­lines of a sem­i­nar or­ga­nized by the In­vest­ment Stud­ies In­sti­tute (ISI) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with EY about VAT, Chugh ex­plained that EY is the tax ad­vi­sor on VAT for GCC states and that the new tax would be in ef­fect by the be­gin­ning of 2018, with ed­u­ca­tional and bank­ing ser­vices and ba­sic food­stuff ex­empted.

ISI’s act­ing man­ager Fadwa Dar­weesh said the sem­i­nar was or­ga­nized to shed more light on how VAT would be im­posed on in­vest­ment com­pa­nies and fi­nan­cial es­tab­lish­ments in Kuwait. Also speak­ing at the sem­i­nar, tax ad­vi­sor at EY Doha Jen­nifer Sul­li­van said that the VAT value would not ex­ceed 5 per­cent and that it would be im­posed on ma­jor com­pa­nies and ex­empt small ones.

Mem­ber of EY’s Kuwait bureau Waleed Ab­dul­fad­heel said VAT im­ple­men­ta­tion in Kuwait would start by the be­gin­ning of 2018 and that com­pa­nies would be given enough time to ad­just their ac­count­ing sys­tems prior to im­ple­men­ta­tion.